I’ve never had a job where I could bring work home. For one, I had to be on the work network to access the software I needed and all the reference materials required were at the office. Plus I never had a home computer powerful enough to do my engineering work - in those days, computers were expensive.
My other job dealt exclusively with classified material and software developed in-house - no such thing as taking work home. In fact, taking work home would have gotten me fired, arrested, and probably imprisoned.
Oh, and my very first job, back in 1970, was PBX operator - I kinda had to be on site for that one…
It really depends on the type of work and frequency of occurrence. I’m lucky, because I’m not even allowed to work more than 40 hours, so the point is moot. If you’re always having to do that, barring competency issues, your place of employment is understaffed and exploitative. I consider it an insult to the folks who got their brains beaten in for standing up for reasonable hours and working conditions to willingly submit to being overworked.
This should have been multiple choice… It’s “sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither” – depending on the amount and type of work (and there are times when I can get my requirements done in a day at the office, and times when I can’t.)
As it is, I didn’t vote, because I do about the same of both options, over time.
Why does nobody ever have an option of “come to work early”, uh?
If it’s allowed and the work is something which doesn’t require a lot of direct interaction with other people (“fixing something another team broke” was a frequent task in my last project, and one which required frequent interaction with whichever big-hand had broken whatever), I much prefer to work from home.
I’m a morning person. Among other things, this means that I am worth shite beyond a certain hour. Making me stay overlong leads to a cranky, overtired Nava and no results worth the paper they were printed on.
I’m a one-shot writer. Some people prepare the structure of their document, and then a first draft, and then review it, and then add the screenshots, and then… Me, I prepare it mentally, then I write it; depending on its nature I may send it already or do a review several hours after I’m done writing (usually the next day).
This means that I have many hours when I’m working but, if I’m at the office, I need to look busy - if I’m at home, I can stare blankly at the wall without interruptions and without offending anybody’s notions of how work must be performed.
I can have music on without having a headset on. Yay.
If the work is the kind which involves long stretches of “waiting for the computer”, such as data loads, I can use those periods to do other stuff.
Last, but most definitely not least:
5) I can curse to my heart’s content when things insist in coming out pear-shaped and do banana dances, gnome dances or the wave when they finally behave.
